The sound of a big motorcycle engine chugged in front of the mortuary. Gravel crunched under the weight of the machine. The engine quit. They were here.
I fed a stack of e-mail printouts through a shredder in the kitchen. They were the replies my hacker had sent, Marissa Albert’s cell phone records from the day she had arrived at Key West. Her last calls had been with her home office voice mail, her sister, Carmen’s resort, and a listing for RKW. Who else could that have been but Goodman. He had set her up.
Heavy steps pounded up the wooden stairs onto the porch. I’d left the door unlocked because I knew they’d barge in.
The clock on the wall said 9:45 P.M. Less than six hours since I’d called.
Jolie shoved the door open. Her expression looked like she’d swallowed nitroglycerine and was about to explode. Her aura blazed as hot as the jet from a flamethrower. A raccoon mask outlined with grime set off her eyes. Goggles rested on her forehead, across a green do-rag cinched over her scalp. Her muscular, freckled arms jutted from a sleeveless denim vest. Grease-splattered cowboy boots showed under jeans and a pair of black leather chaps.
Antoine clomped in behind her. His aura undulated with alarm. He lifted the goggles from his face and the clean skin around his eyes made the rest of his grimy and bug-plastered face look gray by comparison. He brushed dirt from his goatee. “That’s from doing five hundred and forty miles in under six hours.”
“Big fucking deal,” Jolie replied. “We’d’ve been here sooner but the goddamn bike wouldn’t go any faster.”
Antoine peeled the leather helmet off his head. “Serves me right for not getting my helicopter fixed. That’s the last time I ride on the back of your bike.”
Jolie wore fingerless gloves and clasped and unclasped her hands. “Felix, what’s your plan to rescue Carmen? Mine would be to kamikaze my bike right down Goodman’s throat.”
“I feel the same way,” I said.
“So what’s the plan?”
I led Jolie and Antoine to the morgue. We gathered around the work table holding my coffin. I sat and readied my pen over maps that I’d drawn on a yellow writing pad.
The chalices, Leslie and Jack, came to the door.
I turned to Jolie and Antoine. “How about a bite to eat? It’ll get your mind right.”
Jolie eyed the chalices and shook her head. “No thanks. I’m too worked up. Put me close to a neck and I’m likely to do more than feed.”
“Antoine?”
He went to the sink and ran the water, holding his hand under the spout as he adjusted the temperature. “Sure. With coffee. I’ll hold off using my fangs for the serious work.” Antoine splashed water onto his face and scrubbed with a bar of soap.
I said to the chalices, “Coffee then. If you don’t mind, we have private business to discuss.”
“Of course,” Leslie replied. She and Jack left and closed the door.
Jolie paced about the room, still opening and closing her fists. “So what’s the plan?”
Antoine wiped his face and hands with a towel. He balled the towel and tossed it to Jolie. “Here, wash up. It’ll help you cool off.”
Jolie caught the towel and threw it back to Antoine. “I don’t want to cool off.”
“You need to. We all need to be thinking clearly.”
Jolie kept pacing. “I can think clearly enough.”
Earlier, I’d told Jolie what I knew about Carmen’s capture, Goodman, and Clayborn. I was sure she’d shared that with Antoine.
“Just get to the plan.” Jolie kept pacing.
Antoine pulled a chair and sat at the table beside me. I pointed to the map with the layout of the resort, the hotel, and the annex. “We sneak in.”
“Why?” Jolie’s aura burned with so much anger that if it were fire, the house would’ve gone up in flames. “I’d hit them hard in the gullet and plow through their defenses. We’d be in and out before they finished shitting their pants.”
“I like the way you think, Jolie,” I said. “But if we did that, we wouldn’t get close to Carmen, much less rescue her. They have a lot of firepower.”
I pointed to the maps. “My plan is that we sneak inside.”
Jolie clenched her teeth. “I don’t want to sneak.”
“Hear the man out.” Antoine clasped Jolie’s wrist. “After we get Carmen, then you can settle whatever scores you want.”
I nodded to Antoine, thanking him for helping calm Jolie. I smiled at her. “Don’t think of it as sneaking. We’re infiltrating.”
She pulled her arm free and went back to pacing by the table.
“When we trip the alarm, I want us to be here,” I tapped my pen against the drawing of the annex, “instead of here on the perimeter. That will buy us time. I’d rather that we infiltrate in and then fight our way out.”
Jolie stepped close and moved my pen to study the map. “Yeah, makes sense. That way we can recon their defenses on the way in. Plus their attention would be on keeping us out. When we have Carmen, we’ll be attacking security from their rear. That’s always a good tactic.”
“We’ll meet here.” I noted a place between the northwest corner of the hotel and the side entrance, where there were no security cameras. “We’ll climb to the hotel roof. From there we’ll make our way to the annex. I’ll get in through the top. You two go through the basement entrance.” I showed them the door that Goodman had driven the golf cart through. “You’ll find the electrical conduits here. Disable the power. Look for the backup and disable that as well. We’ll use the dark.”
“Dark?” Antoine asked. “When are we going?”
“Tonight. As soon as we’re ready.”
Jolie nodded again but didn’t smile.
I showed them another map; this one had the layouts of the basement, second, and third floors as best as I could remember them. I drew asterisks where the electrical panels would be. I traced my pen over the stairs and elevators. “There is a freight elevator on the north side. That must be how they move the cylinders.”
Jolie stopped her pacing. “Like the one holding Carmen?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, we’re in the annex,” Jolie said. “Then what?”
“We go after Clayborn on the second floor.”
“Why? This plan is to rescue Carmen.”
“I need him to open Carmen’s cylinder.”
“What if Clayborn’s not there?” Antoine asked.
“If, if, this plan is riddled with ifs.” I raised my voice in irritation. “If Clayborn is not there, then we either break Carmen out or we find a way of escaping with the cylinder.”
Antoine pressed on, “We spring Carmen, we capture this Clayborn alien, what’s next?”
“We should be here, back in the basement of the annex. As to getting off the resort, that’s the iffy part of my plan,” I confessed. “We’ll have to play it by ear.”
“Playing it by ear, huh?” Antoine rubbed his chin. “Well, me being a musician, I don’t like this tune.” He sorted through my drawings and took my pen. Antoine hunched over the table. “How about a suggestion? You and Jolie get in the annex on your own.” He drew another rectangle. “This is the roof of the annex.” He marked an X on the rectangle. “After you get Carmen and Clayborn, wait for me here.”
“You lost me, Antoine.”
“Go back a bit. While you and Jolie go to the resort, I’ll make a detour to Hunter Army Airfield and borrow a helicopter.”
Hunter Army Airfield lay southwest of Savannah, a two-hour drive from Hilton Head. The airfield was the home of the aviation brigades for nearby Fort Stewart.
“And this makes my plan less iffy?”
“Considerably. Once Jolie, Carmen, and you get on the roof, I’ll swoop down and scoop you up.”
“In a helicopter?”
“That’s what they got at the airfield.”
I studied the sketch. His idea gave us more of a chance than mine did. “What kind of helicopter?”
“Yeah,” chimed in Jolie, “I don’t want nothing like that piece of crap you got back on the island.”
Antoine scratched his temple. “Depends on what I can get my hands on. Maybe a Blackhawk. A Huey. A big Chinook. That would be fun.”
“You know how to fly a Chinook?”
“Nope. I’ve never been in a Blackhawk either but I’m a quick study. I have confidence in myself.”
“The army’s not going to let you fly off with one of their helicopters.”
Antoine chuckled. “Like I haven’t thought of that already. You take care of your part of the rescue and I’ll worry about getting you off the roof.”
I said, “Timing’s going to be critical.”
“I’m ahead of you. Helicopters carry two-hours-plus worth of fuel. Call my cell phone when you start to move in. I’ll give you an hour. That will leave another hour’s worth of gas to get away.”
“Away to where?”
“That’s the iffy part of my plan. By the time you call me, I’ll have it figured out. I do well in pinch situations.”
I thought about my getting past security, our attack into the annex, the reaction of the guards, and us being ready just as Antoine swooped to pluck us off the roof. This rescue was a real lash-up job. Rube Goldberg wouldn’t lend his name to this rickety disaster-in-waiting.